3 ms·
The funnies thing is the CPI (inflation index). The weight it assigns to housing/rent is about the same as the weight for "restaurants and hotels", and lower th
by tomp 11y ago
The funnies thing is the CPI (inflation index). The weight it assigns to housing/rent is about the same as the weight for "restaurants and hotels", and lower than "recreation and culture" and "transportation". While this might be true for the houseowners and for non-Londoners, for me rent represents about half (!) of my monthly expenditures. Renting "cheap" doesn't really help - even moving a few zones out of the center, rents would for 10-20% at most.
- stegosaurus 11y agoLooking at the CPI list now, it appears that the weighting of housing is broken. It seems that rent is included whilst mortgage interest and imputed interest on equity is not. The split in the UK is very roughly 33% rental, 33% owned outright, 33% owner occupied. What that means is that essentially all the other items have roughly triple the weighting that they should - in a rough sense it ends up showing the housing costs of 1/3 of the population, whilst showing all other consumption of 100% of the population.